‘Denmark, Kingdom of everything erotic’: Danish feature sex films in Britain in the 1970s

ABSTRACT

Denmark was the first country in the world to decriminalize visual pornography in 1969, and several sources indicate that Danish feature sex films were exported widely in the 1970s. Yet our knowledge of the international distribution of these films is very limited. The overall argument in this article is that instead of relying on a wide variety of scattered sources, it is possible to provide consistent answers by limiting the selection of data to one main source. In this case, the reviews of the Danish sex films in the British periodical Monthly Film Bulletin. Although the choice of data in some respects limits the scope of the research, this approach offers credible information on the Danish films in Britain and indicates that the reception of the films was connected to certain recognizable imagined, national traits and an overall discourse of Denmark as a ‘sexy’ nation.

KEYWORDS:

• sex film
• methodology
• history of pornography
• Denmark
• Britain

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank David Baker, Pei-Sze Chow, Brian Iskov and Oliver Carter for providing valuable suggestions and literature in the times of COVID-19.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Palladium’s business archive was acquired by the Danish Film Institute in 2017, but the information on the Bedside films is nearly non-existent.

2 The seven films I would consider sexually themed are Rikki og mændende [Rikki and Her Men] (dir. Lau Lauritzen Jr. and Lisbeth Movin, 1962), Det tossede paradis [Crazy Paradise] (dir. Gabriel Axel, 1962), Jeg – en kvinde [I, a Woman] (dir. Mac Ahlberg, 1965), Sytten [Seventeen] (dir. Annelise Meineche, 1965), Soyas tagsten [The Sex Tile] (dir. Annelise Meineche, 1966), Dyden går amok [Virtue Runs Wild] (dir. Sven Methling, 1966) and Gift [Poison] (dir. Knud Leif Thomsen, 1966).

3 It is worth noting that in the 1980s only five Danish films were screened in British cinemas, among them the two winners of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, Babettes gæstebud [Babette’s Feast] (dir. Gabriel Axel, 1987) and Pelle erobreren [Pelle the Conquerer] (dir. Bille August, 1987), as well as Lars von Trier’s first feature Forbrydelsens element [The Element of Crime] (dir. 1984). All three films are considered to lay the ground for a new ‘golden age’ of Danish cinema peaking with the Dogme 95 movement around the turn of the century.

4 Farmer et al. (2019) note 1967 as the year that the ‘Forbidden Film’ Festival ran. But Danish Blue was released in 1968 and, according to the website The Bill Douglas Cinema Museum, the festival was held in April–June 1969. See http://www.bdcmuseum.org.uk/explore/item/17600/ (Accessed 24 July 2021).

5 The BBFC website does not offer any detailed information on the actual cuts in the Danish films.